1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to personal computers, and in particular to systems utilized in personal computers to initialize the personal computer system wherein one or more peripheral devices such as disk drives, modems, printers and the like are connected to the personal computer.
2. Description of Related Art
In the recent past personal computers have gained substantial popularity among individual users for business and home use. More recently, the portable personal computer has become increasingly popular. Portable personal computers are lightweight, small computers which users are able to conveniently transport while traveling to or from the office.
The typical portable computer has a built-in monitor or screen, a keyboard and a floppy disk drive in addition to resident random access and read only memories, a central processing unit and a number of input/output locations for connecting internal and external peripheral devices such as modems, printers, floppy disk drives and the like. These peripherals are utilized to enhance the performance of the portable computer at its most common point of use, such as the user's home or office and are not typically carried by the user with the unit when traveling. The user may have one set of peripheral devices at the office, a different set at home, and still other configurations at other locations such as the office of clients or acquaintances.
In the past, portable computer users were required to manually reconfigure the system each time a new environment of peripheral devices was encountered, including the situation where the the portable unit was being used in its self-contained configuration where no external peripherals were attached. Re-configuration typically involved setting switches or jumpers to indicate the presence or absence of external disk drives, whether such drives were lo be designated drive "A" or drive "B", whether a particular communication port was connected or not connected to a modem or serial printer, etc. Re-configuration also included execution of system initialization software or set up sequences to identify for the central processing unit the type or specification of disk drive which was connected as drive A or drive B and other system configuration data.